Books, Literature, & Ideas

Green Acres

Greg Grandin : Books

Percy Harrison Fawcett went to the Amazon looking for paradise. He never returned.

From Gorbachev to Putin

Robert V. Daniels : Russia

Five authors provide differing views of the post-glasnost era and of the failed promise of democratic reform in Russia.

No Exit

Daniel Lazare : Non-Fiction

Laurence Tribe's new book asks us to consider the "invisible" web of ideas that have grown around the text of the Constitution. But who's to say what it contains?

Spectacular Wrongs

Samuel Moyn : Non-Fiction

A new history celebrates the nineteenth-century roots of humanitarian intervention and glosses over their imperial pretensions.

Inconvenient Truths

Steven Epstein : Non-Fiction

Elizabeth Pisani and Jonny Steinberg explore antipodal aspects of the fight against AIDS.

An Inky, Well-Paneled Place

D.D. Guttenplan

Comic books, once the source of cultural panic, have achieved a dominant hold on the public imagination.

All Aboard

Bernadette Mayer : Poetry

Poll Position

Alexander Provan : Political Analysis

Pollster John Zogby's new book illuminates the changing nature of American values and lives.

The Plot Against Grimes

David Schiff : Music

A recent production of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes is a grim masterpiece of opera noir.

In the Presence of Darwish

Sinan Antoon

A tribute to the premier Arab poet of the past half-century.

Orthogonian Visions

Thomas J. Sugrue : History

Historian Rick Perlstein explores the resentment and polarization sparked by the Nixon era's cultural and political strife.

Solzhenitsyn's Life and Our Times

Katrina vanden Heuvel : Russia

Despite the controversies he aroused in the West and in Russia, Solzhenitsyn remains above all else a writer who bore witness to Soviet society's long-censored suffering.

Strong Medicine

Melissa Holbrook Pierson : China

An epic portrait of the Tiananmen Square protests, Ma Jian's Beijing Coma is one hell of a powerful novel.

Fathers and Sons

Matt Steinglass : China

Three recent books trace the generational fault lines of the Confucian family during China's past and present revolutions.

Back Talk: Raj Patel

Christine Smallwood : Environment

Writer and activist Raj Patel explains why shopping better won't solve the food crisis.

The James Gang

Brenda Wineapple : Biography

In Henry James and his family, biographers find a fascinating story of dynastic melodrama.

Bright Oblivion

Emily Wilson

A new translation of Sophocles' Ajax derives chilling power from its infidelity to the original text.